Multichannel Single-Source Marketing

How Vitra builds on sustainable communication to market their sustainable designs.

Vitra is a Swiss company dedicated to sustainably improving the quality of homes, offices and public spaces through the power of design. Its products and concepts are developed at the company’s Swiss headquarters as part of an intensive design process, bringing engineering excellence together with the creative genius of leading international designers.

This approach fosters interior concepts, furniture and accessories that are both functional and inspiring, with a particular focus on the longevity of materials, construction and aesthetics. Vitra's headquarters are in Birsfelden, Switzerland. The company also has production facilities in Weil am Rhein and Neuenburg (Germany), Allentown (USA), Zhuhai (China) and Goka (Japan).

Vitra pursues a multichannel strategy with close integration of multichannel campaigning, the online shop and local dealers. "How can we equip knowledge workers to work more efficiently?" – this has been the key question tackled by Vitra on a daily basis in relation with its products, customers and their working environments.

The days when companies competed based on products alone are long gone. Nowadays, communication is what counts. This presents companies with numerous competitive challenges: products and offerings must be appealing and convincing, while customer communication and marketing should be granted equal importance across all types of media and channels. Based on this premise, Vitra defined the requirements for an efficient, dynamic and media-neutral communication and marketing system that supports all output channels and cleverly manages all data and information.

The implementation of censhare for marketing campaigns
allows Vitra to communicate consistently across all channels – from print publications, price lists and websites to social media in one orchestrated campaign. Via censhare, Vitra provides numerous touch points, all of which provide information in a consistent way.

The implementation process involved the successive replacement of other systems like an image database, product information management, a translation memory system, a web content management system and various file servers.

Digital Asset Management
and Omnichannel Content Management
forms the core of the new intelligent system. All workflows
are integrated, from the creation of product information and the preparation of all content and communication through to publication in all channels. Automated processes facilitate localization for languages, sales regions and individual target groups, while an integrated Translation Memory System permits lean, secure and efficient translation processes.

All content and product information
is now managed exclusively by censhare. Real-time updating of stock data and prices is performed entirely through a single interface to Vitra’s ERP system. The solution provides outstanding performance, secure administration and the effective storage of data.

With the introduction of censhare, Vitra has gained a high level of transparency in all its communication assets. Vitra has also significantly improved the efficiency of its processes in marketing. Production processes are automated, which releases employees from time-consuming manual work and allows them to focus on being creative. This in turn has led to an extreme rise in efficiency and a quick return on investment for the new solution.

In marketing, censhare has brought us extreme increases in efficiency and with that also falling costs.

Matthias WesselmannFormer Head of Group Marketing & Communication

HOT DAM 10 Retail Edition

Today the consumer wants to get as close to experiencing the product as they can, and feel the emotion associated with that brand. In a competitive market where cost and convenience are the mantra of the board room, the content production processes need to be as efficient and lean as the rest of the business.

About Vitra

Vitra is a Swiss company dedicated to improving the quality of homes, offices and public spaces through the power of design. Our products and concepts are developed in an intensive design process, which brings together our engineering excellence with the creative genius of leading international designers. It is our goal to create interiors, furniture and accessories that are functional and inspiring. Longevity of materials, construction and aesthetics is our leading principle, as demonstrated by our Classics – many in continuous production since the 1950s. Initiatives like the Vitra Campus architecture, the Vitra Design Museum, workshops, publications, collections and archives are all integral elements of Vitra. They give us the opportunity to gain perspective and depth in all our activities.